LONG standing issues with Craven District Council’s planning department were down to both officers and members, said the councillor tasked with making improvements.

Asked specifically what had gone wrong, Cllr Simon Myers said it was more important that the council learn from past mistakes and move on rather than apportion blame, but that everyone needed to ‘shape up’.

Cllr Myers said the ‘very frank report’ following last year's peer review into the service identified a number of failings and also made recommendations to improve.

He added that the report used ‘gentle public sector speak’ and that by reading between the lines, it was possible to see exactly where the problems lay.

"I think if you read between the lines, you can see. It is partly what they say, and what they don't say. I think the main thing is how we can fix these problems, rather than blaming people for past mistakes. But everyone will have to shape up," he said.

The report identified communication issues between the council, parish and town councils and applicants. It also highlighted problems with the council’s planning committee and its ‘disjointed and adversarial culture’.

Immediately after receiving the report, the council set up an improvement board which has now produced an action plan to implement changes.

It includes the appointment of a senior planning officer to oversee the requirements of the plan, which would include the quicker processing of planning applications.

The plan has four main areas - strengthening leadership,working with partners, member development and service improvement. Once approved, at full council, it will go out to all parish councils, and be published on the council website.

Included in the improvements are workshops and the forming of working groups of officers and members to consider high level developments, with the first examining Hellifield Flashes planning application and enforcement.

There will be training sessions for members on how to ‘contribute effectively in meetings’, and to improve the strength of the chairman. Councillors will also be given a better ‘understanding of their role in the process, their behaviour and standards in committees’.

Cllr Myers said there were some very fundamental changes that had to be made and also some very simple ones.

“It is the culture that is going to be difficult and that is going to require members and officers to work closely together,” he said.

Raising the issue of the difficulty of recruiting planning officers, he said even bigger authorities, such as Harrogate, had vacancies in its planning department, and that a number of Craven’s officers had left to go into the private sector.

But, he added, it was no good budgeting for more officers if the problems lay with the service itself.

“We have got to get it right in the limited time we have left. I don’t want to see the end of my career as a councillor without this working,” he said.

Council leader, Cllr Richard Foster said the planning department had never been perfect, because planning never was.

“This is the first step. There are a lot of steps to fix this but we will get there. Everyone wants Craven to have a better planning service than we do now," he said.